X-Men Gold is an anthology one-shot with former X-Men writers revisiting the title.  Chris Claremont and Bob McLeod provide the main story, which plugs in somewhere just before Scott married Madelyne; everything else is pretty much a vignette, and a few only really work if you take them as deleted scenes.

It surely goes without saying that Claremont defined the X-Men in the 70s, 80s and even the 90s (since even when he left, the style didn’t drastically change until the Grant Morrison/Joe Casey relaunch).  His task here is a thankless one and he pretty much confines himself to doing a nostalgia routine in which a classic X-Men line-up appear in a classic kind of X-Men story.  Once you’ve decided to go down that route, I might have gone for an artist more directly associated with the X-Men than Bob McLeod, but hey, he co-created New Mutants, so close enough.

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Goodness, I nearly forgot about this one.  “Arms of the Octopus” is a crossover between the annuals (sorry, “Specials”) of three titles – All-New X-Men, Indestructible Hulk, and Superior Spider-Man Team-Up, presumably selected by chucking darts at the solicitations while blindfold.  It’s getting its own trade paperback collection, which will be rounded out by the immortal Wolverine: In the Flesh (the one with the celebrity chef).

Stories like this always have more than a hint of schedule padding about them.  But this actually isn’t bad.  The people behind it seem to understand that inconsequential schedule filler presents an opportunity to have a bit of fun, and that if you’re going to do a random team-up between three unrelated heroes, the entertainment had better come from the way they interact with each other.

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I’ll return to this storyline in full once it’s over, obviously.  But in the interests of balance, let’s have a quick look at Amazing #1.

To all intents and purposes, this is a relaunch of Astonishing X-Men, the one-time flagship title that was allowed to wander into obscurity over the years, and didn’t even get invited to the last crossover.  As with any new X-Men title, the immediate question is, what (if anything) marks it out from the rest of the line?

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Fantomex Max is a four-issue miniseries, so normally I would wait for the end of the run before reviewing it.  But I won’t be buying the other two issues, so we might as well cover it now.

Hmm.  I’ve kind of spoiled the ending, haven’t I?

In theory, Fantomex Max isn’t a bad idea.  Wolverine Max has turned out alright – and yes, I’ll get around to reviewing vol 2 at some point, honestly.  But basically, that book has correctly identified the opportunities offered by an out-of-continuity, adults-only take on Wolverine.  You can jettison all the convoluted continuity, get to the core of what makes the character work, and avoid having to tiptoe around things that have a place in a comic about a violent man with knives prone to short bursts of shocking violence.

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I usually put the issue numbers in the post titles, but they won’t really fit here, will they?  So (deep breath) – X-Men: Battle of the Atom #1-2, All-New X-Men #16-17, X-Men #5-6, Uncanny X-Men #12-13, and Wolverine and the X-Men #36-37.

This is what you might call an old-school crossover.  What Marvel usually do these days is to have a core miniseries, and a bunch of other stories taking place against the backdrop of that core story.  But this is a ten-part serial running through four different titles and two bookends over the course of two months.  The way we used to do things, back in the day.  “The day”, in this context, being the 1990s.

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